Right Thinking from the Left Coast

Tag: Department of Natural Resources

Two weeks ago, [Ray] Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant.

“(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth,” Schulze said.

The focus of their search was a baby fawn brought there by an Illinois family worried she had been abandoned by her mother.

Schulze videotaped the fawn they named Giggles during the two weeks she was there. The Department of Natural Resources began investigating after two anonymous calls reporting a baby deer at the no-kill shelter.

The warden drafted an affidavit for the search warrant, complete with aerial photos in which he described getting himself into a position where he was able to see the fawn going in and out of the barn.

Agents told staff they came to seize the deer because Wisconsin law forbids the possession of wildlife.

They killed the deer. A day before St. Francis was scheduled to send the fawn to a licensed wildlife shelter.

The Department of Natural Resources has the law, if not common sense, on their side. It was illegal for St. Francis to have the fawn and the DNR are supposed to euthanize deer in those situations. But you would think a phone call or a conversation with the employees would …

Oh.

“If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up,” [DNR supervisor] Niemeyer said.

You see that? Having an illegal deer on your property is now considered the equivalent of having a stash of drugs. They have to stake out the location, get aerial photos and send in 13 armed agents just in case you try to flush the deer down the toilet or something.

This is what I was talking about last week in my review of Rise of the Warrior Cop. If you give agents these kinds of resources, they will use them. Even if it is to capture and kill a fawn from an animal shelter.